Miller Creek mouth (Lake City, Goodhue county)

Dae-Min Kim

Seining sites that I will choose before I am leaving Minnesota will be mostly streams in the Lower Mississippi River drainage. I have caught or seen 65 native species out of 139 natives IN NATURE of Minnesota. Of the 139 species, 72 that I haven't caught or seen in nature are roughly assigned into 2 groups based on their habitats - Lake Superior and Lower Mississippi River. I hope to have great fun while looking for some of those 72 species in the Mississippi River.
This is Friday with a morning class canceled and an evening party invitation. Although they already make my day, I spent much time on Thursday night in thinking where to go. Two weeks ago, I went to several potential seining sites along the Mississippi River, including the Miller Creek mouth right south of the downtown Lake City. The water level there was still so high that seining was impossible. In a boat ramp near the confluence of Vermillion River and Mississippi River, the entire parking lot was flooded. In a recent two weeks, the water level of the lower Mississippi River has gone down from about 12.8 ft to 7.00 ft. So I finally chose the Miller Creek mouth, because it is closer and expected to support higher habitat diversity.

There is a bridge and a nice parking spot by that. Big water body on the left is the Mississippi River.

Above the bridge, the river bed consists mostly of fine sand. This part of the stream is literally a "creek" with shallow water and slow current. Habitat diversity in this part is actually higher than below the bridge. While there are not many places for fish to hide below the bridge, there are many woody debris and exposed roots in the part above the bridge. Also it is much easier to move on the sand bottom.

* Spottail shiner (Notropis hudsonius)

Spottail shiner was the second dominated species following Emerald shiner. Unlike Spottail shiner, all Emerald shiner were very young individuals.

The substrate below the bridge is mostly silt. It was hard to move around. Leaf covered bottom tells winter is around the corner.  I did not see any fish swimming near shore. They might move to deeper portions like pools in the Mississippi River to overwinter.

* Weed shiner (Notropis texanus)

This is the first time that I catch Weed shiner. This small fish, as a habitat specialist, inhabits in shallow weedy areas like backwaters of the Mississippi River, as its common name tells. The habitat where this fish was caught is not weedy but muddy bank-cut. Maybe I caught a lonely adventurer.
When I first picked up this fish from my seine, I thought its snout looks like Blackchin shiner's and its head looks like Blacknose shiner's but for sure it is neither Blackchin nor Blacknose shiners. Then the only candidate is Weed shiner at least in Minnesota. I double checked my identification with Brett Nagle, Peter Hundt, and Dr. Andrew Simons in the evening party. They confirmed this fish is Weed shiner. I appreciate their help.

I did shore-seining in this part of the Mississippi River main channel. I caught only some young of the year fishes of Emerald shiner and Spottail shiner. If it is summer time, I could catch more species. There are so many dead shells of a mussel species, which reminds me of marine coasts. I do not know if they are Zebra mussels, since they look bigger and lighter colored.

The following table shows the species I caught today.

A lonely carp (Cyprinus carpio) is found dead in this foreign country...